This video by Einzelgänger explains five destructive mind states and how to tackle them.
Video by Einzelgänger
Key Takeaways
A calm mind is a happy mind but most people—especially in this day and age, so it seems—do not have calm minds.
People that are loners can be very prone to these destructive mind states because generally they tend to think more and interact less with people. Oftentimes negative thinking patterns go together with mind states that are destructive.
1. Guilt
There are two types of guilt.
The first one is that a person is guilty of something. He or she has done something bad and therefore is guilty. This guilt is factual, cannot be denied, and isn’t necessarily unhealthy, it’s just the way it is.
The second type of guilt is problematic. This is a mind state that makes you think about mistakes you’ve committed or not committed.
Without knowing what to do about them you constantly think about the things you’ve done, which leads to negative and unreasonable thoughts about yourself.
- Examples of this: you failed a test at school and now you think I’m a worthless human being or you don’t earn the minimum salary that society tells you to make and now you think see I’m a loser.
In worst cases, like cheating on a partner, I think it’s a good thing to be aware of your mistake and the suffering this has caused to your partner and repent for it. However bearing a cross of guilt the rest of your life isn’t going to help anyone.
Guilt is a paralyzing mind state that leads to suffering, self-hatred, and losing your self-confidence.
As a consequence of this, people that are burdened with guilt will start to believe that everything bad that happens is their fault, which will lead to even more self-hatred. It’s a negative spiral.
There are several things we can do about guilt:
- forgiving ourselves.
- change the things we can and accept the things we can’t.
- introspection and reflection.
- communicating with your environment and simply check if your negative self view is similar to the views about you.
- calm your mind.
2. Attachment
In Buddhism attachment is seen as a path to suffering. Attachment is not to be confused with true love and appreciation for others.
Romantic love for that matter, which is often projected in our culture as our ultimate concern, often manifests itself as an unhealthy form of attachment that leads to many negative emotions like hate, and jealousy, grief, and anger.
You can be completely in love with a woman one day, but hate her with a passion the next day when she doesn’t answer your text messages. Ask yourself, does real love transformed to hate at the blink of an eye? It doesn’t, because this isn’t real, its attachment.
Attachment means that you have an inflated desire of not wanting to be separated from a certain object or person.
The opposite of that is aversion. The Stoics see desire and aversion as two sides of the same coin, both instances produce stress.
- An example if you are attached to a person you will suffer when that person leaves you, but if you averse a person you will suffer when that person comes near you.
- Moreover we could say that in both cases you’re attached to a certain outcome. Not getting that outcome causes pain.
- We can also be attached to certain views and ideas about the world.
There are different things we can do about attachment:
- Replacing attachment by unconditional love
- Practicing letting go
- Studying the nature of human emotions
- Accepting the impermanence of things
3. Jealousy
The mind state of jealousy has some overlap with attachment. When jealous you want to have what others have. You might be jealous of someone’s partner, material possessions, job, etc.
The problem with this mind state is that it builds resentment towards the person that you’re jealous of and builds resentment towards yourself because you don’t have what they have.
This is a form of suffering which eats up the energy you can use to actually work on yourself. Instead of feeling jealous towards people you can be inspired by them or what the Buddhists would recommend be joyous about other people’s good fortune and be happy for them.
The positive vibrations this creates will bring more happiness and joy in your own life and prevent that you suffer because of other people’s success.
There will always be people more successful than you. What a miserable existence it is to suffer every time you meet someone who actually has the things you secretly want.
There are different things we can do about jealousy:
- Replacing jealousy with being happy for others
- Detachment from, not aversion, to external things
4. Fear
The four letters of fear can be seen as an abbreviation for false evidence appearing real.
We fear future events. This leads to worrying about the future and anxiety in our mind. We create all kinds of different scenarios that could come true, but we often forget that these are nothing more than fantasies.
Fear is based on thoughts that do not represent reality, especially when it comes to phobias. The reasoning behind phobias is often flawed.
Sometimes we fear things that are not dangerous like the fear of spiders, not the poisonous ones and there’s also something called agoraphobia which is the fear of dancing.
You can’t deny that there are things in life that we should watch out for, but letting these things put us in a perpetual state of anxiety and worry is that detrimental to our health.
There are different things we can do about attachment:
- Using rationality to challenge your flawed thoughts
- Cognitive behavioral therapy is a tool for that which is actually based on Stoicism
- Accepting your thoughts and calming the mind by meditation is another option
- Researching or even exposing yourself to the thing you’re afraid of helps as well.
5. Anger
"When reason ends then anger begins, therefore anger is a sign of weakness."
This doesn’t mean that anger isn’t just. Many people have a good reason to be angry. The problem with anger is its destructiveness. Anger can truly sabotage your life.
Some people are in a chronic state of anger and resentment and however this may be completely justifiable, their anger eats them up inside and creates a wall between them and the rest of the world.
Therefore righteous anger is the same as righteous cancer. Both have a right to be there and possibly with a very clear cause, but both will destroy you.
Being angry at someone is like picking up a piece of hot coal to throw at that person, you’ll burn yourself in the process.
Anger is a waste of time and energy.
There are different things we can do about anger:
- Forgiveness and compassion
- Watching your thoughts closely before you explode, instead of actually exploding
- A good idea it takes restraint to withhold yourself from an angry outburst, but if you do it, it will save you and your environment a lot of damage. In many cases the damage you inflict is irreversible